Batman has the best rogues gallery in comics. I’m sure you could rattle off over ten Batman villains without breaking a sweat. From archenemies like the Joker and the Penguin, to more minor characters like Man-Bat and Clayface, Batman’s villains are each classic in their own right. But who are some of the best obscure characters of the Dark Knight’s menagerie of bad guys? Here, we list down some of the most memorable obscure baddies who battled the Caped Crusader…

5. Professor Pyg

IMAGE VIA DC COMICS

One of the creepiest, most insane Batman baddies ever created, Professor Pyg was introduced in Grant Morrison’s Batman run and certainly left an impression. Running the equally freakish Circus of Strange, Professor Pyg lobotomizes unwilling victims into becoming mindless dolls to act as his muscle. Pyg turns out to be a mere minion for the main villain Simon Hurt but he proves to be much more memorable, both for his strange design, his disturbing methods, and his bizarre manner of speech, which manifests itself as random nonsense akin to a word salad. Pyg has since gone on to appear in various other forms of Batman media, such as Batman: Arkham Knightand Gotham, cementing himself as one of the best new Batman lunatics.

4. The Condiment King

Image Via Batman Wiki

From the scary to the ridiculous, the Condiment King is one of the sillier bad guys of the Batman universe but he’s made an impression for being so ridiculous he’s actually incredible. His gimmick is, you guessed it, condiments, as the Condiment King wields guns that shoot out ketchup, mayo, mustard, hot sauce, etc. If that doesn’t sound like a threat, well, its because it isn’t. The Condiment King always gets taken down very easily, as the most he can do is give you some stains. But he’s always hilarious when he does show up and he’s so little of a threat its easy to feel kind of a bad for him.

3. Orca

Image Via Batman Wiki

Another ridiculous Batman villain, Orca first appeared in the ’90s. A former marine biologist, Dr. Grace Balin got into an accident that left her paralyzed. Experimenting on orca whale DNA, she injects herself with the genetics and transforms into Orca the Whale Woman, with all the powers of a whale at her disposal! Her motives were always rather unclear and she had a few unmemorable appearances before being shot dead by Two-Face. Luckily for her, she’s appeared alive and well again in the DC Comics reboot Rebirth, now an opponent to Nightwing.

2. Copperhead

Image Via Pininterest

Cooperhead, real name John Doe, was an assassin who took up a snake motif for his acts of villainy. He could use his costume to strangle people to death in its powerful coils and also had a venomous bite. His weakness was that he became obsessive toward a chosen target, ignoring everything else to his often detriment. Copperhead was killed during the Blackest Knight storyline and a new Copperhead, a woman called Jane Doe, took up the mantle of the snake in the New 52 reboot, antagonizing both Batman and the Flash.

1. Kite man

The poster child for silly super villains, Kite Man first appeared during Batman’s Silver Age. He was exactly what he sounded like, a kite-themed villain who tried to pretend he was something of a threat. After a scant few appearances, Kite Man joined the D list roster of Batman’s rogues gallery, languishing in obscurity for years. It wasn’t until the DC Rebirth where he was given a new lease on life, returning as a recurring joke villain who always got the short end of the stick from Batman and other heroes of Gotham. Whenever the writers needed a one off villain to get punched or humiliated, Kite Man was there. But Kite Man in this run is more than he appears and is given gravitas unexpected of the character, which we won’t spoil here. All we’ll say is: “Kite Man. Hell yeah.”

Who are some of your favorite obscure Batman bad guys? Tell us in the comics and get hyped for Batman Day on March 30th!

I never thought I’d be reading a book the size of the first iPod Touch until I came across the latest editions of John Green’s bestselling books. Marketed as Penguin Minis, these books have text that reads horizontally with onion-thin pages flipping upward. As a person who loves to lug books around, this would be a perfect option in theory. In execution, I was completely wrong.

I never thought I would hate a book format more than a poorly designed e-book, but Penguin Minis have come along to prove me very, very wrong. The point of these books is to be super easy to handle. Apparently, the “revolutionary landscape design and ultra-thin paper makes it easy to hold in one hand.”While I will admit that the book itself feels quite nice to hold in such a nontraditional way, trying to read the pages and flip from page to page is near impossible. The pages are so thin that there is no way I can successful grab onto only one, instead flipping an entire chapter.

GIF Via The New York Times

The text size is nothing to complain about unless you’re not used to reading mass market paperbacks with similarly thin pages and smaller print than typical paperback books or if you have particularly bad eyesight. I took issue with my bad eyesight combined with the small font and the thin pages. From a distance, it was hard to keep track of where I was on the page as the words from the pages before ghosted onto the page I was reading.

Photo via Emily Hering

On top of all of this, there are twenty-five skin-thin pages at the end of the book just hanging out. What does Penguin and John Green expect me to do with these? Write notes in them? Doodle my interpretation of Gus’s pre-funeral? Write my riveting review of the novel? What is the purpose of these twenty-five blank pages?

In conclusion, would I purchase a Penguin Mini again? Absolutely not. They may be perfect for reading on the subway during rush hour, but the thinness of the pages makes reading a two-handed activity, even for the most agile of readers. I will give them credit and say that it is probably one of the cutest books I will ever own and it will look preciously displayed on my bookshelf. It may just be a case of a format that Americans aren’t quite used to and with an audience that isn’t quite ready for another revolution in literary distribution, this time in the form of palm-sized books.

Penguin Random House has withdrawn a memoir about Nelson Mandela’s final days from publishing according to reports from the Guardian. The book was heavily critiqued by family members of the former president of South Africa.

His widow, Graça Machel threatened legal action before the book was pulled. The publisher pulled the book out of respect for the family, as it had very personal details that involved some of Mandela’s relatives.

The book was originally released on July 18th, Mandela’s birthday, dubbed “Mandela Day.” The book was called “Mandela’s Last Years” and had details of events relating to his death, including information about a spy cam that was placed in the morgue where Mandela’s body was kept, and more information about an ambulance that caught fire while transporting him.

Header image courtesy of The Ambassadors Magazine

“We received permission from the family. All parties who needed to be consulted were consulted,” says the author and physician, Vejay Ramlakan, in an interview with eNCA before the book was withdrawn.

Those in charge of Mandela’s estate have called the information in the book “deeply regrettable and unfortunate and constitute unlawful disclosures” in a statement.

via Nelson Mandela Memorial Garden

It’s unfortunate the story is no longer available, as it sounds incredibly interesting. An ambulance fire sounds like something out of fiction, not a memoir.

Mandela is famous for his humanitarian work and work in government. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, 20 years before his death in 2013 due to an infection in his respiratory system.

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